Descriptions in enola gay exhibit
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of State Byrnes believes A-bomb is useful diplomatic tool. Stimson to Truman: – “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”WW2 pro-USSR propaganda posterlecture 12Byrnes and the Direct Approach to the Russians – Fall 1945.September 11 letter to Truman:“For if we fail to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase…lecture 12.Henry Stimson begins to have doubts about secrecy and the Soviets For then it would be clear that the basis of present policy making is without foundation.”lecture 12Col. David Lilienthal (1stchairman of the Atomic Energy Commission):“What is there that is secret? If my hunch that in the real sense there are no secrets …would be supported by the facts, then real progress would be made.At heart of this: a wish for enduring American atomic monopoly which an “atomic secret” made possible.lecture 12.16, 1945: “We do not have a secret to give away – the secret will give itself away.” One of great miscalculations of the Cold War– Stimson, Sept.This was an absolutely novel situation.lecture 12The Myth of The Atomic Secret For people trying to develop an atomic policy, there was no historical precedent.Yet, the fantasy of safeguarding a secret remained and Soviet backwardness remained.lecture 12Some points to consider….Controlling the “secret” of atomic energy.– “…a beer can with a label.”lecture 12Early Attempts to Control The Atom1945-47 Enola Gay displayed with little fanfare and no interpretative material.Consider opposition to exhibit in the context of American politics and culture in 1994Symptomatic of largercultural discourse?lecture 12Dénouement.Tom Crouch, NASM curator:– “Do you want to do an exhibit intended to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibit that will lead visitors to think about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan? Frankly, I don’t think we can do both.”lecture 12Triumph of the Hiroshima Narrative = A Defeat for History?.Who would shape our historical memory?lecture 12Purpose of Exhibit Fundamentally, dispute was about America’s attempts, 50 years later, to come to grips with its nuclear past.By late 1970s, consensus had generally emerged.lecture 12This is all academic, though…lecture 12Hiroshima 50 Years Later:The Enola Gay Exhibit.Argued that Truman helped create the Cold War and that the Bomb had influenced this shift.lecture 12Historians Continue to Add Their Views.Gar Alperovitz, influential 1965 book Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam.Evidence accumulates that challenges the traditional Hiroshima narrative.lecture 12‘Revisionist’ Historians Reconsider Atomic Bomb Decision.Article’s tone – one of duty and necessity.lecture 121960s- New Sources Emerge.Stimson’s article fostered fiction of a million soldiers spared from harm.
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No evidence of this anywhere in Stimson’s diary or other notes.lecture 12